Take It From Us with Kent Johns | Podcast Guru

Details

If you're navigating mental health struggles, addiction or recovery — your own or someone else's — you'll hear what actually worked, what didn't and what people wish they'd known sooner. Take It From Us is the voice of lived experience, featuring people sharing their own journeys, unscripted and unfiltered. Host Kent Johns is a broadcaster and health coach who believes everyone has a story worth hearing if someone takes the time to really listen. Press play — you might hear your own story in someone else's. If you need support, click here for helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis/

Recent Episodes

What's the difference between failing and quitting? Ask Stefan Ozich

Three people lost to suicide in three years. The last was his brother, Jerome. So endurance athlete Stefan Ozich picked a challenge that genuinely scared him — running Te Araroa end to end and back again, something no one had ever done. He called it The Long Path, after what the trail’s name means, and ran it for men’s mental health. This week on Take It From Us, Stefan talks to Kent about why he keeps putting his body through gruelling events most of us would never attempt, and why he thinks...

30 MIN

What 53 days as National Party leader cost Todd Muller

With the election on 7 November, we’re re-releasing two conversations that have nothing to do with how you vote, and everything to do with what politics asks of the people in it (Grant Robertson’s episode is back in your feed today too). In May 2020, Todd Muller was elected leader of the National Party — one step from a boyhood dream of being Prime Minister. Within five days, panic attacks were so severe he could barely get through speeches, the words on the page moving and disappearing. Afte...

43 MIN

Why Grant Robertson said no to being Prime Minister

Election day is 7 November and politics is everywhere right now... but here’s a different kind of perspective on it. We’re re-releasing our conversation with Grant Robertson about what the job costs the people doing it — whichever way you vote (Todd Muller’s episode is back in your feed today too). “I’m a catastrophiser,” admits New Zealand’s former Deputy Prime Minister. Behind years of COVID decisions sat a panic attack he didn’t see coming. As pressure mounted to replace Jacinda Arde...

37 MIN

Nic Russell: How do you keep living after your child dies?

Nic Russell has been through more than most — breast cancer, a heart transplant and Parkinson’s. None of it comes close to 2005, when her three-year-old daughter Kenzie died of bone cancer. Even when she could no longer walk, Kenzie wanted to be alive. Nic has carried that with her ever since. It doesn’t mean pretending things are fine. She’ll have a pity party, but she won’t live there. She leans on good friends, cold water and dark comedy. When Kenzie died, the professional support stopped....

42 MIN

Mia Simcock: The bipolar diagnosis she didn't want anyone to know about

Mia Simcock didn’t know what a psychotic episode was until she had one. She was 19 and studying at Otago when she went five days without sleep and lost touch with reality. A second episode a few years later brought a bipolar 1 diagnosis, and her first instinct was to tell her parents they couldn’t tell a soul. In this episode, Mia tells Kent why she eventually stopped hiding it, what she has to do to manage her health from the minute she wakes up, and why people struggle to believe she’s unwe...

28 MIN